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I don’t think I have ever had something like matchmaking so completely and totally ruin a game for me. I mean, queuing up as Alliance for BGs in WoW was pretty bad towards the end, but Titanfall? Holy Jesus, it’s bad. So bad that I started an Imgur album to detail it. Examples:

Balance.

More balance.

This matchmaking is so terrible it cannot possibly be random chance. I mean, I can understand a little bit of snowballing – god knows that if I see a veteran on my team, I play it out until I get sick of the game – but this sort of shit is just stupid. All Titanfall has is it’s moment-to-moment gameplay, so for you to face an entire 10 minute match with your nose in the carpet the entire goddamn time is worse than the most banal daily quest in any MMO. I’d rather be grinding Golden Lotus rep – at least at the end of the day, I’d have something to show for my blood, sweat, and ample tears.

I tried to play some PlanetSide 2 to wash the taste out of my mouth, but the game crashed to desktop after about 20 minutes.

Remember when I said I never buy games near their release days and/or at full MSRP? This is why. If I could resell Titanfall or get a refund, I would; then maybe come back when the developers got their shit together.

Speaking of surprises, the patch notes were somewhat full of them. Or rather, not full of them, which itself is surprising. The most obvious changes were to two Legendary cards I talked about last month: Nat Pagle and Tinkmaster Overspark. Pagle’s nerf was brilliantly subtle, taking the form of moving the card-draw coin-flip from the end of your turn to the beginning. It almost doesn’t feel like a nerf at all, but the reality is that Pagle isn’t likely to be haunting the upper echelons of tournaments any longer; that one extra turn of being able to deal with Pagle before the draw engine full gets started is actually pretty huge.

In contrast, the Tinkmaster nerf has all the subtlety of Jay “And double it!” Wilson game design. Which may as well have been the case, since the card was “fixed” (in the veterinarian sense) by doubling the RNG.

From hero to zero.

Where things get interesting is the peek into the Hearthstone card balance logic when the blues explained the Tink nerf:

Tinkmaster is a neutral card that silences and often shrinks big creatures. This reduces the amount of big, fun creatures in the environment. We think this change will increase the amount fun creatures in the environment, and bring him more in-line with his cost and overall power. Tinkmaster should still show up in certain types of decks, but will no longer be appearing in every high level deck.

While they did talk about cost and overall power at the end, the main concern was how Tink was “reducing the amount of big, fun creatures in the environment,” e.g. other Legendaries, presumably. Cards like Ragnaros and Ysera are win conditions in of themselves, and have pretty much gone unchanged since they were introduced; people who were holding out hope that perhaps these Legendaries would get the Pagle treatment seem out of luck. Hearthstone is not Magic: the Gathering, of course, but it appears this fact will need to be repeated a few more times before it fully sinks in.

And speak of the devil:

Secrets can now only activate on your opponent’s turn.

Activating your own secrets feels a little strange, but mostly, the ability to do this was preventing us from creating new and powerful secrets that trigger off of events you can easily control (like a minion dying). They end up functioning just like spells, instead of trying to bait your opponent into a bad play. This change keeps secrets working like traps you lay for your opponent, instead of spells that you cast and use on your own turn.

I would characterize this Secret change as a huge Paladin nerf, but Paladins are pretty much nonexistent at high levels of play, and their Secrets are gimmicky at best. However, this change turns those gimmicks into Disenchant material. For example, Redemption is a Paladin Secret that says the next minion of yours that dies, gets brought back to life at 1 HP. Pair that with a value creature with Charge like Argent Commander, and you can suicide into a minion and come back to deal some extra damage. Or, of course, you could use Redemption with a Legendary for some serious card advantage.

Well, not anymore.

In any case, Hearthstone is out, it’s fun, and it’s F2P for US audiences… and merely Free-to-Download, In-App Purchases Optional (F2DIAPO) for those in the EU. Blizzard is offering a WoW mount for those willing to get rolled by beta veterans until three wins are grinded out, so there’s that too.

Far Cry 3 is the latest entry in the mostly unrelated, Heart of Darkness-esque Far Cry series. The game follows Jason, a trust fund frat boy who is violently thrust into a hideous underworld of slavery, rape, and torture on an otherwise pristine island paradise when his friends are captured mid-vacation by pirates. Much like the other two games, FC3 features a long string of story missions set amidst a wide-open island sandbox.

Far Cry 3 has a lot going for it. The game is unbelievably slick, from top to bottom, in almost every respect. For example, it is easily the best-looking Far Cry, with graphics and sweeping vistas that rival the likes of Skyrim. But the slickness permeates deeper still, down to character animations too. Stealth kills start off brutal and in-your-face, only to escalate further once you unlock the ability chain them together, use the target’s own knife to score a long-distance secondary kill, and so on. This sort of Ninja Gaiden feel is on top of the many layers of weaponry that impart similar visceral thrills, be they sneaky bow sniping or front-door grenade launcher-ing.

Another thing that was extremely well-done are the missions, dialog, and general plot. Missions flow well, the various tasks you are given feel substantial and necessary, the characters are absolutely unique, and there is a general sense of gravitas to your actions. In comparison, the mission structure in Far Cry 2 made less sense, or at least, it felt less impactful.

But therein lies the rub.

Grenade Launcher is a tad OP. One shot, 3 vehicle explosions.

As I have mentioned over the years, I view Far Cry 2 as one of the more sublime gaming experiences I’ve ever had. That game knowingly used its own flaws as a vehicle for storytelling, such that by the end of the game, you felt exactly how the in-game characters felt: weary, despondent, and resigned. Far Cry 3 attempts to recall the same lightning, but it can’t quite pull it off, for several reasons.

One of those reasons is that Far Cry 3 feels a lot more “gamey” than its predecessors. Part of the progression system involves hunting and skinning various animals to unlock additional weapon slots, a larger wallet, and so on. By itself, the mechanic is perfectly valid. However, it feels more artificial, especially given the fact that you are straight-up using cash in the stores to buy things. Why do I need to skin goats to expand my $1000 wallet? Couldn’t I just, you know, pay the $50 for a new wallet? Does this store really sell sniper rifles but no wallets?

That might sound like a little thing, but it’s precisely the little things that can break immersion. Far Cry 3 features a normal sort of game map, for example, but it’s a, ahem, far cry from the in-game map you had to actually glance downwards to see in FC2. More jarring to me though, was the crafting interface that necessitated crafting via the menu screen. Popping syringes felt pretty smooth, but effectively pausing the game with bullets in mid-air to pump out another half-dozen healing ampules just sorta felt wrong. And I haven’t even mentioned the interface riddled with perfectly usable but undeniably busy UI elements, mini-maps, quest trackers, and so on. Far Cry 2 didn’t even have crosshairs on by default, for god’s sake.

I, uh, I didn’t start the fire…

It is worth mentioning, in a general sense, that Far Cry 3 also continues the series penchant for wildly oscillating difficulty curves. If your natural inclination is to try and be as stealthy as possible when assassinating targets, you will experience some nice challenges. If you instead realize that a single flame arrow can burn down the hut your target is inside, or your bafflement towards unlocking infinite grenade launchers so early in the game leads to always equipping it, well… the game is remarkably easy. There are still a few missions where you can lose by raising the alarm or by letting an NPC die, but damn do you feel silly sneaking around after bombarding outposts with grenade fire and/or regular fire. Same outcome, minimum effort.

Overall though, I still feel like Far Cry 3 deserves top marks. Recommending that someone play FC2 carries a bit of baggage, as it doesn’t really become “worth it” unless they stick through it the entire way. In contrast, someone could play Far Cry 3 at pretty much any given moment in the game and feel like they experienced the best bits. I have seen some reviews that lament FC3’s later half for being less noteworthy, but while the main antagonists are less interesting at that point, it is somewhat offset by gaining a wingsuit and ample means to use it everywhere. Far Cry 3 is not particularly long, but I believe it’ll be worth the lower purchase price for most anyone… or at least FPS fans.

Green Armadillo from Player vs Developer has a post up about the somewhat skewed incentives in Hearthstone. Essentially, Blizzard does not have too much of an incentive to do Matchmaking based on card rarity/quality, as not doing so allows the paying customers to get some easy wins against non-paying customers while hopefully encouraging the latter to spend some money to get out of the hole. Plus, queue times might go up if they segmented the audience too far.

I’m not really going to comment too much on the situation itself, because it is kinda true. Hearthstone is a CCG, and like all CCGs, it is Pay-To-Win until all the cards are obtained. Moreover, there appears to be a good chance that the Matchmaking algorithm is not even in place or functioning properly. And like I have mentioned in the past, Blizzard has stuck close to the CCG model of strictly-better cards being “balanced” around their rarity.

But let’s put all that aside for now, and start talking solutions.

1) Stick to Arenas

Hearthstone is basically the Arena for me; everything else is simply a means to more Arena games. The only real reason why I would care about opening more packs and whatnot is to get cards that will allow me to complete my daily quests faster. That might change at some later date – likely coinciding with me actually opening up something more than a Rare card – but for now it is more than enough.

If you are leery about the Arena, don’t be. It is the great equalizer. Sorta. It is still entirely possible to be screwed via RNG by facing opponents that got two Legendary cards whereas you barely have one Epic. Plus, sometimes you get little to no selection when it comes to removal or class-specific cards. I went 4-0 the other day as a Warlock, feeling good, and then got matched with a Mage that had four Fireballs. In a normal game, you can’t even have more than two of the same card. I ended up losing to that Mage, plus a 2nd mage that had a seemingly never-ending supply of Freezing cards (Blizzard, Ice Lance, etc), and some third guy that undoubtedly didn’t deserve to beat me somehow.

Hmm… I’m not exactly helping things, am I?

2) Basic decks can still be good.

Generally speaking, Basic Decks are not at too much of a disadvantage depending on the class you are playing. That means both your class and their class. So while the daily quest can basically dictate which class you end up having to play as to get rewarded, there are steps you can take to put the odds ever in your favor.

For example, this Mage deck is entirely Basic cards:

I don’t even have any non-Basic Mage cards yet.

By a complete coincidence, the two dailies I had sitting around were “Win 5 games” and both had Mage as one of the class options. I went 5-2 with the above deck in Unranked mode.

I am not suggesting that I am some pro player – my Arena matches usually keep me humble – but understanding the hidden depths to something simple like the above deck is key in turning games around. For example, Kobold Geomancer is not a particularly desirable card on it’s own, since it often (at best) trades with other 2-drops. And while you should absolutely play it early if you don’t have anything better, keep in mind its hidden power: turning Arcane Explosion into a Consecration on turn 4. Even if they play something with 3 HP, you can spend your 3rd turn sniping it down to 2 HP before likely wiping their Turn 1-4 board. Hell, it even works in the late-game considering you can Geomancer + Flamestrike to take out 5 HP dudes, or finish off a line of wounded guys with the 2-damage version.

If I had all the Mage cards, would I replace cards in the above deck? Of course. Mana Wyrm is a complete no-brainer, for example. Then again, most of the cards I would add would essentially morph the deck into something else entirely – Mana Wyrm, Blizzard, and Cone of Cold all have a much different feel to them than Arcane Missiles, Arcane Explosion, and Kobold Geomancer shenanigans. To say nothing about the non-Basic Neutral cards available.

There are absolutely certain classes that are much weaker than others when they do not have access to their powerful Rares/Epics – such as Warriors and Brawl – but the Mage really isn’t one of them. Even classes like the Shaman can win unexpectedly with just their Basic cards (i.e. via Bloodlust).

All that being said, yes, you can and will roll over and die to some Diamond+ League decks. One of the losses I had in my run was to a Priest, who only won because Blizzard knee-jerked buffed the hell out of them in the latest patch. Mind Control, in particular, is some major bullshit:

It’s 2:1 Card Advantage, minimum.

I had two big blockers Mind Controlled in that match, along with facing some Shadow Word: Pain slowing my early game. “Playing around” the Mind Control is possible, sure, but it cedes control of the board to the Priest unless they haven’t been playing anything else this whole time. Flamestrike is certainly powerful and has to be taken into consideration when facing a Mage, but let’s face it, the Mage is perhaps the best class to deal with Mind Control – everyone else is screwed.

Even though that game felt completely awful to me, it is worth mentioning that I was 1 damage away from stealing earning the game at the end.

This would have felt SO GOOD, dammit.

Fireball for 6 damage, Frostbolt for 3 damage, Hero Power for 1 damage would have left the Priest at 1 HP and frozen. Now that I think about it… holy shit, guys. I’m so dumb. What I ended up doing was Fireball the Lord of the Arena (my own, by the way), Frostbolt the Yeti, Hero Power the Priest, and then attack for 2. My logic at the time was that if I could bluff him into worrying about a Pyroblast (10 damage), he might play more defensively while I continued digging a way out of the hole. It didn’t occur to me that being frozen by the Frostbolt might have prevented him from using his own Hero Power to heal… letting me ping him for 1 damage and the win next turn.

Even if that doesn’t work – I’m honestly not sure – the point is the same: I had him to within 1 damage with a Basic deck. A minor decision at the beginning of the match or an errant attack against a creature I didn’t have to might have made all the difference. So while some cards are horribly OP and possibly locked behind a rarity wall, just keep in mind that a better player might have been able to steer your same deck and same draws into a win.

So… strive to be that better player.

3) Your cards only ever improve

This likely won’t feel like a “solution,” but your card situation in Hearthstone only ever improves. But more importantly, keep in mind that if you are feeling particularly weak without a certain card, you can craft that card specifically. Each pack of cards can be disenchanted for 40 Dust, minimum (+5 for Common, +20 for Rare). That is enough for a 100% assured Common card of your choice, per pack. Three packs would equal a Rare of your choice plus 20 Dust leftover. Ten packs would give you any Epic of your choice. And if you were crazy enough to do so, 40 packs will guarantee any Legendary card of your choice.

Again, those are minimum numbers. If you (digitally) crack open a second Rare, or an Epic/Legendary/Gold version of any card, the Dust payout increases substantially. Plus, you know, you might actually open the card that you were looking for to begin with.

What I am basically trying to get across here is that Green Armadillo (and others) are correct: Hearthstone is a “F2P” CCG whose principal purpose is to extract the maximum amount of dollars from you in a completely typical F2P way. The important difference here, and reason I am likely to be playing Hearthstone for a long time to come, is that Blizzard isn’t being particularly nefarious about it. Try playing Magic Online or the upcoming Hex by investing zero dollars while still earning actual cards. Try playing any CCG and having a predictable and free (!) method of eventually acquiring any specific card you want. I mean, everyone pretty much agrees that the best way to play Card Hunter is to throw down $25 on their Basic Edition, and that’s also a F2P game. A similar “investment” early on could make your daily quests in Hearthstone that much easier.

Or save your money, like I’m doing. Losing streaks suck, but the Matchmaking software will fix it eventually if going Live doesn’t do so by virtue of deepening the pool of players. The minute you hit 150g, you can buy a ticket into a cloistered realm where, even if everyone doesn’t have the same quality cards, you are at least not shackled to playing around with just your Basic ones. Plus, 7 wins before 3 losses means you can get back in for free. And even if you go 0-3 like I have on a few occasions, the minimum you walk away with is something like this:

Just be aware of the ego-bruising that accompanies it.

What’s that? A booster pack plus almost as much Dust as you’d get disenchanting a 2nd pack.

Card balance isn’t exactly where it needs to be – beta is beta – but the one thing least deserving of criticism is Hearthstone’s business model. While being in the Hearthstone Hole is discouraging, it is not and will never be as bad as the same phenomenon in traditional CCGs nor even your everyday F2P app with a payslope. I mean, Jesus, I’m not sure how other CCGs can compete with this.

My Press™ coverage of Hearthstone has been pretty glowing thus far, so I wanted to talk today about some lingering concerns about a few issues that cropped up in the last week. I do not believe these to be structural problems necessarily – I feel like they could be fixed within the Beta – but I also have no idea how Blizzard will address them, if at all.

1) Unbalanced Heroes

On paper, the nine Heroes you can pick between are balanced. Here is a rundown of their powers:

By the way, all of the listed abilities cost the same amount of resources (2 crystals).

One of the more annoying classes to play against.

The problem in reality is two-fold. First, there is a huge difference in synergy between a Hero’s powers and the class-restricted cards. The Priest’s ability, for example, combos ridiculously well with one of the default Priest cards: Northshire Cleric, a 1/3 creature that let’s you draw a card when a creature is healed. In fact, entire mechanics revolve around and/or become enabled by the Priest’s ability. Enrage, for example, is an ability that triggers an effect when the creature is damaged. One of the most common cards that uses Enrage is the Gurubashi Berserker, a 2/5 creature that gets +3 Attack each time it’s damaged. Smashing into a 2/2 will beef the troll up to a 5/3, which is nice… but also puts it within range of a lot of counter-attacks. A simple heal from the Priest though, puts it back to 5/5, letting it snowball further. Then you have goofy cards like the Angry Chicken, which is a 1/1 with Enrage: +5 Attack. Obviously you need to combine that creature with some other effects to boost its Health, of which the Priest has many.

By means of comparison, nothing combos with the Hunter ability. In Magic: the Gathering, the devs eventually created the Bloodthirst mechanic that boosted a creature’s stats (or some bonus effect) if it was played the same turn as the opponent taking damage. No such thing exists in Hearthstone, at least for now. And while Rogue decks need no assistance, the Combo system on Rogue cards have nothing to do with the Rogue’s ability; at least the Druid, Warrior, and Warlock are thematically consistent with their class cards. Then again, perhaps we should look at the Priest as an outlier rather than the bar that other classes should reach.

The second problem is related to the first: what class cards are available by default radically changes the strength of your deck. Now, sure, technically everyone will be able to unlock all 20 basic class cards by simply playing against the computer (assuming they didn’t want to challenge players). But take my word for it: many of those early games suck. Hard.

Through either a combination of the first issue or the second, I can already tell that some Heroes are being left in the dust by the Beta population. I would say more than 95% of the Ranked games I have played have been against either the Mage, Rogue, or Priest. For a good reason: they’re strong.

There are a few clever things Blizzard is already doing to (presumably) combat this trend. One of the types of daily quests is to win 2 games as a specific class. When I logged on yesterday, for example, I had to win 2 games as a Druid and Warrior (two separate quests, as I had missed yesterday’s daily). Having played neither before, I created custom decks for both and then went for a spin against some human opponents. Those games played out very differently than my normal games, and were pretty fun to boot, although I doubt I will be spending much time with them until I luck into some of their non-basic class cards from booster packs.

The other clever move to improve class experimentation, if not promote diversity, is how Arena mode matches start by forcing you to pick between three random class Heroes before you start the actual Draft process. The other day, I had to pick between the Hunter, Druid, and Shaman, all of whom I had never played with before. While they let you mouse-over their Hero powers from that specific screen, the more critical aspect of the Heroes is ultimately their selection of class-specific cards. Spending some time in your collection looking at all of the class’ cards – which, by the way, Hearthstone allows you to do even if you don’t own them – is definitely recommended.

For the record, I chose the Hunter. And went 0-3.

Worst possible Arena result, I think.

2) Unbalanced Cards

Beyond the Hero issue and the class-specific card issue, I have a problem with the card balance in a few locations. Basically, I don’t feel like strictly-better cards should exist in a CCG, especially not when it appears it’s being “balanced” around rareness. Take a look at the following:

Balance!

There is precisely one scenario in which you might choose the raptor over the gnome: if you were playing some kind of Beast deck (e.g. with the Hunter). And actually, you might put in the gnome even in your Beast deck; por que no los dos? At least with the Ooze, you can convince yourself that there are certain scenarios in which blowing up the opponent’s weapon is better than whittling down their blockers for free.

By the way, only the Paladin, Warrior, and Rogue are likely to ever have weapons equipped. That Ooze is pretty much a dead draw 90% of the time in my experience.

A few other cards are simply ridiculous. Pint-Sized Summoner, for example, pretty much single-handedly caused me to lose an Arena game (I had no targeted removal at the time). Bloodlust is probably balanced, but 100% of the games in which I lost to a Shaman have been due to that one card… and a bunch of suddenly bloodthirsty totems. And so on.

3) Over-reliance on Taunt

This section is going to be short, because the title sums it up: Taunt is both ubiquitous and pretty much the only means of combat shenanigans.

This should have been a combo, dammit!

In case you aren’t aware, Taunt is a creature ability that forces an opponent to only attack the creature with Taunt, as opposed to being able to attack any creature or just smash the opponent’s face in directly. Without Taunt, basically whoever drops creatures first is at a huge advantage since they can decide to attack any “special” creatures their opponents play with their own creature or ignore them. Pretty much the only rational strategy then becomes A) play special creature and then immediately drop a Taunt meatshield, or B) beef up a Taunt creature and control the board. An all-in-one package example of the latter is Ancient of War, which is an absolute bomb drop in Arena, by the way.

4) Playing first puts you at a huge disadvantage

Another shorty, but basically I never ever want to go first when playing Hearthstone.

Each player draws three cards before a game, and can choose to send any (or none) of the cards back and draw different ones. Whoever goes second draws a fourth card during this phase, and thus can fish for their deck combo cards or removal that much deeper. Plus, after the first player’s turn, they get a 0 crystal card called “The Coin” that will temporarily give you 1 crystal for a turn. So, basically, going second you can cast a 2 crystal card on your turn 1, or 3 crystal card on turn 2, and so on. What makes it even worse is that The Coin counts as playing a card/spell, which can trigger all sorts of nonsense, such as a Defias Ringleader suddenly giving the Rogue a 2/3 and 2/1 creature on turn 1.

Conclusion

Having said all that, I do feel like these are solvable problems. For the most part. Given the simplicity of the resource system and the mechanics in this first set, I am not quite sure how things will get balanced. The Knife-Juggler and Pint-Sized Summoner could be reduced to 2/1 and 1/1 respectively, and still be worth playing. But what about those Hero powers? The Hunter power can’t be reduced to 1 crystal or the damage increased to 3. Would they buff the Hunter class cards instead? What if a player doesn’t actually use those “balancing” cards?

Time will tell upon release exactly how broken some of these interactions are. Time will also tell how much we or Blizzard particular care. I probably have the most fun in Arenas (I went 8-3 and 9-2 this weekend, the latter of which resulted in 310g) where dropping game-changing cards is the norm, and Ranked matches sorta feel like 2v2 Arena in WoW somtimes. I would rather it be balanced of course, but this is also a CCG – there being only a few viable decks at the upper-end is pretty much par for the course. But if Blizzard wants to do some (more) groundbreaking things with their game design, they are going to have to fix the above four issues at a minimum.

Diablo (1) did not have skill trees, it was a feature added to Diablo II, and then more or less copied by World of Warcraft. Some could say to World of Warcraft’s detriment as it’s been struggling with how to cope with a skill tree system, which has huge inherent issues with very little benefit, for years. Diablo III, like Diablo II, is an evolution of the series and game systems.

I agree with that characterization of talent trees, specifically that they have huge inherent issues with very little benefit. Talent trees, as the way they are set up in WoW currently, give the illusion of choice. There is a good Extra Credits video called Choice and Conflict which talks about this issue. Essentially, the “choice” being presented in WoW’s talent trees are really calculations, not actual choices.

If you look up the EJ builds for your spec, chances are you will actually see where the Blizzard designers tried to give you choice in Cataclysm’s revamp. Here is the EJ build for a PvE Retribution paladin:

If you’ll notice, you have 1 extra free point floating around (technically you have 3, but nevermind) – this means there is literally nothing else that will increase your DPS. Choice, amirite? Well… no. Your “choices” are:

Guardian’s Favor = HoP’s cooldown reduced by 2 minutes, longer HoF.

Selfless Healer = Stronger WoG’s for teammates.

Acts of Sacrifice = Cleanse removes snares.

Divinity = easier to heal you.

Eternal Glory = sometimes a free WoG.

Last Word = WoG more likely to crit on low-health targets.

You may not be familiar with Ret paladins, but hopefully that comes across as outrageously boring, because it is. But what about PvP? Here is Ret in PvP:

Know what changed? We got rid of Divine Storm (just AoE for trash), a talent that makes Crusader Strike scale with haste, and then just picked all the WoG-boosting talents and a faster HoJ cooldown. In other words, there is no differentiation there at all. There is technically another PvP build that sacrifices the faster HoJ cooldown for even more WoG healing, but that’s basically it. Ret’s Cataclysm choices are DPS vs HoJ vs WoG-boosting. Pick only one! Just like this new system, except only one choice instead of six.

For fun, I took the paladin tree and blacked out all the talents you either couldn’t get, or were identical whether you chose PvP or PvE. This is what it looks like:

Choices!

Ret paladins are actually a terrible example to use in the Mists of Pandaria talent scheme, since Blizzard essentially took 9 talents from the Ret tree and are asking Rets to “rebuild” the spec with only half as much as they had before. Hopefully that will change before things go Live, but I’m used to the idea of paladins being nerfed into the ground and/or Ret getting screwed, so whatever.

Point is, the talent tree system has always been bad. There was nothing exciting about leveling up and putting a talent point in something that just increased your damage by 10%. Under this new system, you get the 10% damage talent automatically and then get to decide something that is actually meaningful. Nils used the following example under druids:

Level 45
Feral PvP: Faerie Swarm, for more damage, a ranged snare and against cloakers.
Non-Feral PvP: Typhoon, because it is instant and keeps players at range no matter what damage they take.
Feral PvE: Faerie Swarm, because the rest is completely useless.
Non-Feral PvE: Typhoon, because it is instant. But you won’t use it much.

He thinks the obvious choice for Feral PvP is Faerie Swarm. Are you kidding? One of the funnest things in WoW is popping out of stealth and Typhooning people off of ledges, which has traditionally be reserved solely for Balance druids. I would always choose Typhoon, because Typhoon is fun for me. That singular instance of interesting choice is worth the entire overhaul to me. Nevermind my ability to give Ardent Defender the finger and not be too punished for it. And being able to take Shadowfury as an Affliction warlock. Or getting Cauterize and Ice Barrier as an Arcane mage. Or… you get the idea. Some classes have more interesting choices than others, but hopefully these were just rough drafts.

Overall, as an ex-WoW player I am more excited for the expansion than I was three days ago, almost entirely based on these changes alone.

About two weeks ago, I pointed out how the Diablo 3 forums are really the place to be if you are interested in Blizzard’s evolving, internal design philosophies. It is not every day that you hear Bashiok come out and say that WoW has been “[…] struggling with how to cope with a skill tree system, which has huge inherent issues with very little benefit, for years.” Nor the disdain that Jay Wilson feels towards PvP affecting PvE game balance. Now there is another nugget of design insight from Bashiok which, while not as bombastic, is still rather interesting:

In some cases though we are purposefully avoiding affixes we just don’t think promote good gameplay, like +damage to X. We want people to play the game and have fun, not feel crappy because they’re in an area full of ‘beasts’ and are stacking +damage to demons. It also encourages a whole host of other divergent gameplay like holding sets for specific types of enemies, or building sets to run specific areas at end-game. Lastly it’s very difficult to make affixes like that compelling, and not necessary. Either it’s powerful enough where people do all those crazy things to leverage the bonuses in destructive ways, or the affix is just de-emphasized to the point of meaninglessness.

Feel free to read the actual thread for the full context, and the full quote for that matter.

I find it interesting because it perhaps speaks towards the larger question of specialization, and what role (if any) that it should play in games generally¹. Is having and collecting a demon-slaying set not fun? I remember back in the Quel’Danas dailies circa TBC how I would typically skip the non-demon quests on my paladin since having Holy Wrath made the impaling-demon-corpses quests that much quicker/more entertaining. Here was a time to flex an oft-neglected muscle in a thoroughly satisfying way!² Of course, the flip side of specialization also in TBC was how paladins were heroic 5m tanking demigods and largely unbalanced garbage raid tanks.

Honestly, Blizzard probably has the right idea here. Specialization with equipment sounds nice on paper, but it also devolves into the D&D-esque “golf bag” problem when you simply “specialize” in everything, and whip out the demon-slaying sword for one fight, and then the beast-slaying sword the next. Similarly, class specialization is usually long periods of underpoweredness punctuated by brief moments of awesomeness… assuming the class is balanced to begin with.